INTRODUCTION: Course evaluations play a significant part in the facilitating of educational programmes at a university. Along with course evaluations, students are often asked for their reflections on teachers’ pedagogical methods and approaches. These types of questions can
be referred to as student evaluations of teaching, or SETs. Separately, there is growing, yet underdeveloped, interest in understanding the emotional impact the role of being a university lecturer has on the individual teacher. This piece of work is interested in combining the areas
of teacher development, SET and emotional impact. Therefore, this research is seeking to understand how teachers in a department of social work engage with student feedback, manage this feedback and understand pedagogical self-development.
METHODS: A mixed approach (an online survey and semi-structured interviews), was taken to gather the experiences of the teachers.
FINDINGS: The results show that all the teachers engaged with student feedback. It also showed that some teachers experienced negative emotions regarding feedback that were unpleasant but had strategies to deal with the feedback.
CONCLUSION: The results also pointed towards individual-directed solutions as the drivers behind creating good practices around pedagogical self-development, and for managing any emotional impact of SETs.